daily dress and soothe. Numbness might be
my favorite of your gifts. Floatation: sensation that the idea of Time is being painlessly
removed. But I dove down to wait with the
others (encrusted, intact), souls like doubloons up to their necks in sand. Not a bad
spot to see some eternity. Let me fall silent
here 1,000 ... 10,000 ... 100,000 years wrapped
in the suture of the sea (space-age patterns
trafficking above me) then rise, unchanged,
to clear waters, well-rested and hungry. The
exotic results from such slight contextual
changes, so do not tell me what I must not do.
In matters of defiance, the human mind has
always been wisest and supreme. C linically
insane, according to the scientists, who seek
nothing if not ultimatums."

And might it be real, a real place he might one
day reach by diving, delving, not just an idea
percolating somewhere beneath the mantle
of his mind, a trick
to punish and push?
Like the Hell claimed by televangelists-off
camera, in the center. Well, they were right
about the heat anyway. He can feel it in the
exhalations bubbling up from the trenches.
But might the advent of eternity feel in the
end a lot like non-existence, the way, lately,
his skin feels to him bone-dry in the deepest
water?

[toys in the tub]

132

Salmon strait-jacketed in the shoals off
Vancouver Island. The matriarchal pods of
killer whales always put on a pleasant show.
He likes to come here when thoughts won't
stop coming. Danger: The tall fins are mature
males who do not govern themselves. BeauFUGUE #3l